November 4, 2014 Off

Microsoft to marry Office with Dropbox for cloud productivity

By David

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Juan Carlos Perez.

In the latest example of Microsoft partnering with a major competitor, the company has struck a deal with Dropbox to improve interoperability between Office and Dropbox’s cloud storage and file sharing services for consumers and businesses. The partnership, announced Tuesday, creates a "coopetition" relationship, since Microsoft’s OneDrive and OneDrive for Business compete against Dropbox’s namesake consumer service and against Dropbox for Business.

The motivation is to make life easier for the company’s vast number of shared customers, which currently store 35 billion Office files in Dropbox. While in a perfect Microsoft world, all Office users would rely on OneDrive and OneDrive for Business, Dropbox has amassed a user base of about 300 million people. Meanwhile, Office has 1.2 billion users…

Read more from the source @ http://www.infoworld.com/article/2842978/cloud-computing/microsoft-to-marry-office-with-dropbox-for-cloud-productivity.html

November 4, 2014 Off

F5 Launches Silverline Hybrid Cloud Service Portfolio

By David

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Editorial Staff.

F5 Networks (FFIV) is broadening the reach of its services fabric with the launch of Silverline, a hybrid services delivery platform designed to enable organizations to scale IT resources across dynamic cloud and data center deployments. With Silverline, F5 is providing customers with a services delivery platform that expands its F5 Synthesis architecture to enable application services within customers’ deployment model of choice—from on-premise to as-a-service deployments.

The new banner will include security, optimization and availability services from hosted and managed infrastructure. According to Manny Rivelo, executive vice president of Strategic Solutions at F5 Networks, organizations are looking for ways to cost-effectively deliver applications without constraints…

November 4, 2014 Off

Do the math: The true cost of cloud computing

By David

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

Total cost of ownership, aka TCO, has become the data point we want to understand most as cloud computing moves into our enterprises. Better put: We endeavor to pinpoint the costs of using public and private clouds in the enterprise over the next three to five years and the value (if any) it will return.

This may seem like an easy number to calculate, but in reality the cost models are complex and ever changing. Here’s why:…

November 4, 2014 Off

ProfitBricks Slashes Cloud IaaS Pricing Again – Continues To Lead Industry In Price/Performance Ratios

By David

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

ProfitBricks, the price/performance leader in Cloud Computing IaaS, is challenging the industry yet again, slashing prices 30 percent, and has doubled the price drop percentage of the industry leader in the last year. "Customers should have fundamental control and flexibility over their cloud experience, and not have to worry about being gouged on price," said Andreas Gauger, co-founder of ProfitBricks.

"With our approach, customers can tailor their service to meet their exact requirements, and avoid over- or under-buying of cloud infrastructure. It’s an ‘unbound’ philosophy that we feel delivers on the true promise the cloud was intended to be. We kicked off the current price war with a 50 percent drop in July 2013 and we are now seeing the largest players in the industry resort to the old, tired pricing, packaging and lock-in schemes of yesterday’s enterprise IT."…

November 4, 2014 Off

Google Cloud goes corporate with peering, carrier interconnects, VPN

By David

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Google has apparently been listening to what business customers want from a public cloud. On Tuesday the company announced that it will introduce Virtual Private Networking support in the first quarter of 2015. VPNs will let customers tie securely into Google Cloud via the internet, and they are a key foundation of hybrid clouds that let customers keep some key applications and data under their control in-house while also relying on the public cloud for other workloads.

Also new from Google: Direct peering promises a fast connection to Google’s network from 70 locations worldwide. And new carrier interconnects add Google cloud access from Equinix, IX Reach, Level 3, Tata Communications, Telx, Verizon and Zayo facilities around the world…

November 4, 2014 Off

Is Amazon’s Dominance In The Cloud Under Threat?

By David

Grazed from GuruFocus. Author: Mihir Mehta.

It is true that Amazon (AMZN) is struggling with its bottom line and for a good period of time, it has just been assuring investors that the time would soon come when it revives its growth trajectory. In the third quarter as well, Amazon missed the Street forecast and the shares plunged 9 percent after the company provided lackluster guidance for its fourth quarter. The guidance was more disappointing because the fourth quarter is the holiday season in the U.S. and European markets as well and therefore, investors were hoping to get favorable assertions from the management.

Looking back

Over the past two years, Amazon has been running in different directions including experimenting with smartphones but most of these initiatives have not yielded expected results. In the third quarter, net loss widened to $437 million or 95 cents per share in the third quarter, from $41 million or 9 cents a year ago…

November 4, 2014 Off

Cloud Soon to Represent Three-Quarters Of Data Center Traffic, Cisco Predicts

By David

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Within the next four years, 76 percent of the traffic through the world’s data centers will be cloud-based traffic. Increasingly, this traffic will consist of public cloud services, as more enterprises become more comfortable with this model. Software as a Service will also dominate.

That’s the latest prediction from Cisco, which crunched the numbers in its latest Cisco Global Cloud Index (2013 – 2018). The Cisco report also forecasts that overall data center traffic will triple in volume, growing from 3.1 zettabytes a year in 2013 to 8.6 zettabytes in 2018. (A zettabyte is a trillion gigabytes.) The growth will be at least 23 percent annually…

November 4, 2014 Off

8 Powerful Tips That Will Improve Your SaaS Conversions

By David

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Neil Patel.

Do a few minutes of research, and you’ll come up with a load of conversion advice. “Make CTA buttons bigger! Create killer headlines! Streamline your checkout process!” Ad infinitum. Ad nauseum. Don’t get me wrong. All those things are important, but they will only take you so far. The very best conversion optimization is tailored to specific industries. The more specific and focused the conversion tips, the bigger impact you’ll see.

If you are in the SaaS industry, there are at least eight industry-specific tips that you should follow that will help you to improve conversions.

1. Make it free…

November 4, 2014 Off

Can OpenStack open up Europe to Huawei’s cloud computing ambitions

By David

Grazed from Diginomica. Author: Chris Middleton.

The rise of the Chinese computing and telecoms giants has been the subject of considerable attention in the West in recent years and in particular the potential impact they will have on what has been a US dominated tech sector. An interesting perspective was cast on this this week at the OpenStack Summit in Paris where Huawei, staking a claim to be China’s leading IT company (by sales) at the event, announced its intention to be a cloud provider of choice in Europe.

In particular the firm sees the UK higher education sector as a key target, and named Northumberland University as its first client in that space. Telefonica UK (O2) already uses Huawei cloud services. The company sees its mission as being to fill a gap, according to Ren Zhipeng, president, cloud computing product line, with that gap being the operational gulf between legacy systems and new cloud deployments…

Read more from the source @ http://diginomica.com/2014/11/04/can-openstack-open-europe-huaweis-cloud-computing-ambitions/#.VFjD2fTF91Y

November 4, 2014 Off

HP and Wind River Partner to Create Carrier Grade HP Helion OpenStack Solutions for NFV

By David

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Today at the OpenStack Summit, HP announced a partnership with Wind River to develop solutions with HP Helion OpenStack(R) technology to enable carrier grade network functions virtualization (NFV) capabilities.

The addition of proven carrier grade technologies from Wind River into HP Helion OpenStack is designed to provide communications service providers (CSPs) with an open source based cloud platform that meets their demanding reliability requirements and accelerates their transition to NFV deployments…